Geoffrey Garin: Political polls and the 2000 Democratic Convention

In-Depth Coverage of the Democratic National Convention

(CNN) -- Geoffrey Garin has been the president of Peter D. Hart Research Associates since 1984. He is also in charge of the Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, the firm's political division. Garin has served in the campaigns of several governors and is a consultant to the Democratic Governors Association. Working on polling and campaigning strategies, Garin has advised many of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate and 12 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. His political essays have been published in The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor.

Chat Moderator: Welcome to the Allpolitics chat room, Geoff Garin.

Geoffrey Garin: Hello, and I'm very happy to be here.

Chat Moderator: Are you conducting your campaign polling with likely voters only?

Geoffrey Garin: The polling we do for candidates is done with likely voters, but the polling for publication purposes is generally done with registered voters until Labor Day. After that, we concentrate on likely voters.

Question from Monarch: Mr. Garin, with these divergent polls, from 14 to 3-points, it seems "margin of error" means nothing. Can you explain if the margin of error really is relevant right now?

Geoffrey Garin: It is relevant. Margin of error is an important way to understand the accuracy of polls. The mistake people make is comparing the spreads in polls -- that is, the difference between the Gore and Bush vote -- and that's not how margin of error is calculated.

In the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Bush was ahead 44 to 41, and in the ABC/Washington Post poll, Bush was ahead 48 to 40. The important comparison between the two is how they have each candidate's numbers, not the difference in the so-called spread between the candidates.

Chat Moderator: Many people complain that they have never been polled and don't know anyone who has. Can you please briefly explain how a random sample of voters is selected?

Geoffrey Garin: The idea of a random sample is to give every person an equal chance of being interviewed. We essentially take all the phone numbers in the United States for a national poll, or in a particular state for a statewide poll, and do a random selection to get the appropriate number of interviews.

But, if you think that there are 100 million voters in the country, it makes sense that most people haven't had the experience of participating in a poll. However, at this stage, an awful lot of people have.

Question from Moe: Do you expect the polls to change after the Democratic National Convention?

Geoffrey Garin: What I expect is for the polls to really begin to settle in. We've had some pretty wild swings in the polls, and the fact is the voters are tuning in very late in the process this year. By Labor Day, voters should begin to get a clearer fix on the race and their own preferences so, at that point, there should be fewer changes and fewer gyrations.

Chat Moderator: What happens to this convention and Al Gore if they lose headlines to the crisis with the Russian submarine?

Geoffrey Garin: This is a very important period for Al Gore, a chance for him to come out of President Clinton's shadow and become known to the public in his own right. Anything that interferes with that process, obviously, is undesirable from the perspective of the Gore campaign.

Question from Hello: How do the debates typically affect the polls?

Geoffrey Garin: It varies with the election year but this year, the debates have the potential to be very important because there's concern among voters that George W. Bush is not ready for prime time. This will be a chance for people to find out whether or not he is and how he performs under pressure.

Also, Al Gore's greatest advantage in this election is the difference between him and George W. Bush on the issues. The debates are a chance for Gore to explain those differences and to make it clear why the differences are so important.

Question from MMY: Excuse me, but if the president does not stop running around apologizing for his past problems, how will Gore ever come out of the shadows?

Geoffrey Garin: One of the important factors in this political year is that voters are concerned about the moral standards of the people who hold the office of president. I think the key point Clinton was making last week is that he recognizes his own shortcomings and failures but, in any event, it would be unfair to blame Al Gore for what Clinton himself acknowledges to be a personal lapse.

And I think the most important point the president was making was to ask voters to separate their personal judgment of him from the judgments they make about Al Gore's own moral character.

Question from Ajr: What do national polls matter if the state-by-state numbers are different?

Geoffrey Garin: That is a very good question. In some ways, the national polls overstate Al Gore's challenges in the swing states. He is so far behind in places like Texas and Utah and a few other Southern states that it overstates the Gore deficit in key swing states.

But having said that, the election is a rising and lowering tide that affects those states. Generally, the national poll numbers have been a pretty good barometer of where the tide is and against that, you can judge where various states might be.

No one, of course, has won an election when he lost the national popular vote so the national popular vote, as reflected in the public opinion polls, is still a helpful guide.

Question from Blort: How would you measure the possible effect of anti-Semitism on the election?

Geoffrey Garin: That's an excellent question and it is a very hard thing to do, in that in social conversation or in a public opinion interview, people do not like to admit their prejudice. Some pollsters have asked how people think their friends and neighbors might react, as a surrogate for getting at the respondent's own opinion.

In a recent CNN/Time poll, a plurality of those who said Senator Lieberman's religion would make a difference said their neighbors would be less likely rather than more likely to vote for Lieberman. I believe nationally, 17 percent or so said they thought their friends or neighbors would be less likely to vote for Lieberman because he is a Jew. The Northeast was very different from the rest of the country on that question.

Question from Blt35: Joe Lieberman has differences of opinion with Al Gore on school choice, Social Security reform, etc. How can Gore attempt to paint Republicans as extreme when his own vice presidential nominee agrees with some of the major Republican initiatives?

Geoffrey Garin: First of all, it's important to note that Vice President Gore and Senator Lieberman agree on Social Security reforms. Senator Lieberman has come to the conclusion that the Bush approach is the wrong way to fix Social Security. And the fact is, that even on vouchers, Senator Lieberman clearly supports the Gore approach as the more important way to improve public schools in America.

While they may disagree on some aspects of the voucher question, on the larger question of how to improve public education, Lieberman and Gore are really of one mind: That the main priority needs to be making the investments and doing what's necessary to improve public schools. The last thing we should be doing is taking money away from public education to fund private school vouchers.

Chat Moderator: Do you have any final thoughts for us?

Geoffrey Garin: I think this will be a very exciting and interesting election and I'm looking forward to the next few months. We'll learn a lot about the voters in America during that time.

Chat Moderator: Thank you for joining us, Geoff Garin.

Geoffrey Garin: Thank you very much.

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